Meaning
by FluffleNeCharka
Summary: Fillmore thinks over what the badge means. [Oneshot.]


AN: There's a lot of Fillmore-centricness to this. I hope it's in character… It's late, so my writing is probably bad, and I probably shouldn't post this, but this category needs more fics, darn it!

--------------------------------------

This badge means a lot to me.

First, it meant fear. It meant an end to everything I wanted to do. In that golden color I found fear because it didn't matter who was guilty and wasn't to the olden day Patrollers, it mattered if you were there when the crime went down. I learned to lower my head and look at my shoes when I saw that pin.

Then it meant anger. Why should they get that kind of authority, man? Who said they were good enough for it, who handed them their power? I didn't know, but those people had made mistakes and I felt the fear melt. These idiots didn't know what it was like, and they didn't try to. I wanted to back them back, those jerks who wore that little piece of badly molded metal.

After a while it meant confidence. They were beneath me now. They had to work by more rules now than ever. They had to play fair and they were getting _beat_. I knew it, they knew it, but every time I saw that badge I knew it in my heart. And boy, did it feel good to know I better.

Friendship.

It only meant that when held out to me by some skinny white kid with a big smile. And I gotta admit, it was kinda touching. I mean, this guy could've slammed me into the ground with detentions and fines and fees that coulda buried X's Millionaire Club. Instead, he didn't tell Folsom about almost all the stuff I'd done. Instead, he held out the badge. He offered me a way out.

He was not the kind of person I associated with that ugly piece of bling. I thought of badges and thought of Officer Johassen, who had been suspended for only a day after beating a girl unconscious for bringing video games to school twice in a row. I thought of Officer Kouki, who had given 900 detentions in two months. He… he held the doors open for girls and wanted to hear my side of the story.

At first, I felt awkward about the whole thing. Me, going straight? What was next, Sunny going gay? I glanced at the thing and adjusted it constantly, 'cause it was weird. Suddenly I was wearing that symbol. What the heck did it mean now? Stupidness. I didn't know the regulations and I didn't know when to flash the thing or hold it back. (Most times I did the latter.)

It wasn't too long before it meant guilt.

Oh, it means other things, a whole lot of 'em. But when I look at it, I see those who have fallen before me. I see my brothers and sisters in the crime biz, locked up behind bars because I cracked. I told on them, a lot of them, to get out of the worst parts of my punishment. I never came to the Safety Patrol, but once I was caught, I let loose secrets. The kind of secrets you aren't supposed to tell to anyone. I let them down, and they will never forgive me. That badge, for how little it is and how stupid it looks, made me forget who I was, who I am. I try to be honest.

But it reminds me every day that I'm not. I'm a traitor. I turned my back on them and every day, every single shift, I remember that. It hurts deep inside. It's something I can't change, but I want to. I want to more than anything in the world.

I'm with a new crew now.

So the question is, am I gonna make the same mistake again? If the payoff was big enough, would I leave them to rot? I think I wouldn't but hey, I didn't think I'd leave Sonny behind or end up busting half the people I worked with. I wish I could say. It's something that bugs me more than I can say. Ingrid's the poetic one. I wonder if I'd turn her in if I'd get a lot out of it? I keep turning it over in my head and I hope I wouldn't. I hope.

That's that the badge stands for.

Hope.

Hope that I can rise above what I used to be, hope that I'll never _forget_ what I used to be. Hope that I'll always do what's right, that I won't be like Johassen and Kouki and all the other dirty Patrollers. Hope that maybe one day I'll be able to ask myself these questions and _know_ the answers. But above and beyond all that, it's a symbol of hope because I've seen the difference it can make in people's lives. And really, it means…

Everything.


End file.
